On Wednesday 10 October 2018 09:58:22 rhkra...@gmail.com wrote: > On Tuesday, October 09, 2018 04:01:49 PM Gene Heskett wrote: > > On Tuesday 09 October 2018 12:20:25 Brian wrote: > > > It's about time some invented a WiFi device which plugs into a USB > > > port. > > > > Not needed, you can buy such a dongle from netgear for at least half > > a decade or longer. I was out of ports on the 4 port in the shop, so > > I bought one, moved an old router (running dd-wrt) out there and > > turned its radio on, and rigged a teeny desk for my lappy so I could > > ssh into the machines and write gcode in the comfort of a folding > > chair, then exercise it while being able to see the machine move. > > But I had to turn the radio off because it was also bridged to the > > main router, and thence to the backbone. One of my neighbors got by > > the simple ssid, and used 80 gigs of my bandwidth one month so the > > radio got turned off and I now have it hardwired when its out there. > > So now the radios stay off unless one of my boys brings in a > > smartphone and needs a connection. > > And that reminds me that there are also somewhat similar devices that > plug into a USB port and provide (in my case) 4 more USB ports and one > RJ-45 Ethernet port. I bought a couple of those on eBay (surely from > the far east) for less than $10 each a few years ago. > > I use them to connect tablets without Ethernet ports to my LAN. > > I suppose you could then plug the Ethernet into a WiFi adapter, but > I've never tried that, and I'd begin to worry that some timing issue > or similar might prevent it from working.
Thats something that one of the wifi gear makers (linksys?) has also had for 16 years or so. When I was playing visiting fireman at a tv station in the UP, (I'm a retired broadcast engineer) the motels internet was a router with a radio. My lappy's bcm4318 radio could not connect more than 15-30 seconds at a time. So the motel had little 3" square boxes you could ask for, plug it into the rj45 net port on my old lappy, and it just worked most of the time. The router needed a powerdown about 2x a day but mostly worked. I'd stopped this machines predecessor's suckage of email with fetchmail, so I could then get my email via t-bird from my motel room 950 miles away. Eventually the outfit that had set the motel's internet up replaced the flaky router, and the last time I went up it just worked if I borrowed that little box. The bcm4318 was on a PCMCIA card but I never found one to replace it as everybody seemed to think it was a $150 card. And would not let me test it in my machine. No sale, obviously. Now I've got some little gismo from netgear that IIRC cost a bit over 30 USD that plugs into the usb port adjacent to the rj45. No longer in use as I had to turn that routers radio off for lack of access security. A neighbor was using 2.5x my own net bandwidth/month thru it. And they might not have realized they were. I've no neighbors smart enough to know, or care. Probably a smartphone, which will grab any signal it can get. Shrug. -- Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
